Over 7,000 People From India Sought Asylum In US In 2017: United Nations

The annual Global Trends report of the UN Refugee Agency showed that 68.5 million people globally were displaced as of the end of 2017. Among these are 16.2 million people who became displaced during 2017 itself, indicating a huge number of people on the move and equivalent to 44,500 people being displaced each day.

The worldwide forced displacement to a new high in 2017 for the fifth year in a row is driven by wars, other violence and persecution which is led by the crisis in Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan’s war, and the flight into Bangladesh from Myanmar of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees. Especially, it is developing countries that are most affected.

In the US, the trend of increasing asylum claims from people originating from the north of Central America continued.the largest nationality of applicants with 49,500 claims are the Salvadorans. Asylum claims from Venezuelans increased by 63% to 29,900. Other nationalities from which there were more than 5,000 claims in 2017 were Mexico (26,100), China (17,400), Haiti (8,600) and India (7,400). Altogether claims were received from nationals from 168 countries.

There were 197,146 refugees as at 2017 end in India and 10,519 asylum seekers with pending cases.There are about 40,391 asylum seekers from India at the end of last year. Syria was not the most common country of origin for new asylum-seekers. Afghanistan nationals submitted 124,900 claims in 80 different countries which is the highest number of asylum claims by a country.

The refugees who have fled their countries to escape conflict and persecution accounted for 25.4 million of the 68.5 million. When compared to 2016 the number is 2.9 million more and also the biggest increase UNHCR has seen in a single year. People displaced inside their own country accounted for 40 million of the total.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said, “We are at a watershed, where success in managing forced displacement globally requires a new and far more comprehensive approach so that countries and communities aren’t left dealing with this alone” and further added, “But there is reason for some hope. Fourteen countries are already pioneering a new blueprint for responding to refugee situations and in a matter of months a new Global Compact on Refugees will be ready for adoption by the United Nations General Assembly.”